Tommy's Triumph

A Rock Musical Success Story

rock. That has created the irony of having rock's old guard as the show's harshest critics, claiming that changes in the story line and theatrical orchestrations have diluted the original work.

Those complaints don't bother McAnuff, who points out that this stage version is just one more interpretation among many over the past 24 years.

"Some people think we've changed the ending - but they're comparing it to the Ken Russell movie of 1975, not necessarily the original album," McAnuff said recently.

"The Who's live recording of the last tour had a different feel, too. The original album was more ambiguous," he said.

McAnuff added that when composer Pete Townshend finally agreed to help with the theater version, it was Townshend himself who decided the story needed a more concrete conclusion.

Townshend has said he cleared up the finale because the open-ended fantasy of the '60s rock-hippie-drug culture is no longer viable.

"Reams have been written about the piece, but this ending seems to bring people to their feet every night," McAnuff said. "So, why bother to change it?'' McAnuff spoke by telephone from New York, where he was finishing up rehearsals with the new touring company. The show opened last week in Dallas and moves to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for two weeks beginning Tuesday. The show already has a $1millionadvance sale, representing 72 percent of the available tickets.

From here, it travels to Tampa and returns to South Florida for a week at the Kravis Center beginning Nov. 16.

The tour's physical production costs $3.7 million, almost as much as the $4 million spent at Broadway's St. James Theater, Zeiger said. The additional money built into New York's $6 million-plus overall cost includes advertising and other additional costs.

Much of the hype surrounding The Who's Tommy has focused on its technical gadgetry, but McAnuff said that's a false guidepost. Although the show is the most complex he's ever worked on, he never intended it as spectacle.

"My own ambition was to do a dramatic version that brings a sense of humanity to the story," he said. "The first problem was to find a way to tell the story representationally as theater." -- McAnuff would not attempt such a thing without Townshend. But getting the composer to participate had been Zeiger's problem for years, even after securing the rights in 1989.

Townshend's motorcycle accident in 1991 changed that. An injured hand kept him out of the studio and off the concert stage, and forced him to consider other creative avenues. He later agreed to meet with McAnuff, Zeiger and the other producers.

"Des [McAnuff) and Pete got along like long-lost brothers," Zeiger recalls. "I think they wrote the entire story line in the lobby of our hotel that weekend."

McAnuff has a more vivid recollection of a conference held much later, when the show was already in previews.

"Pete wanted to talk about the dramatic elements and I talked constantly about the orchestrations. Over time, we had gone through a role reversal. Pete is a real collaborator, both with the music department and with me," McAnuff said.

"It took us only 10 minutes at the first meeting to find that we were like-minded about the show. One of the most important things for me was that Pete said the song order from the original album wasn't sacred."

That allowed Townshend and McAnuff to arrange the story elements in order to create a through-line for the narrative.

"We couldn't give it depth or resonance without establishing what film writers call a `back story,'" McAnuff said.

-- The result is a long opening tableau that begins early in World War II, depicting the meeting between Tommy's parents, their marriage, Tommy's birth, the war and the family crisis that finally led up to Tommy's becoming deaf, dumb and blind.

"That's accompanied by a great overture by Pete," McAnuff said. "He's adapted an operatic device that's 2,500 years old for the show."